Brian in
News |
August 1, 2005
ChuckJ is blogging! Chuck is one of the founding fathers of Borland's Delphi and has recently joined the ranks of Microsoft. Check out his blog at www.removingalldoubt.com.
Brian in
Coding |
February 20, 2005
A long time ago I posted an article explaining why Visual Studio can’t design abstract forms. I also promised that I’d show you a way you could make it work in Whidbey using Whidbey’s type description provider mechanism. Well, a long time has passed and I never wrote the follow-up. It’s time I fulfill my promise.
Note: While this is a cool and funky example of the power you wield with custom type description providers, Microsoft doesn't support abstract base classes in the designer, so if you use this technique in your own code, you are on your own.
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windows forms component model
Brian in
Coding |
November 14, 2004
System.Design is an assembly that contains design-time classes such as ControlDesigner. The System assembly also contains a System.ComponentModel.Design namespace that contains design time classes. Even System.Windows.Forms contains a System.Windows.Forms.Design namespace. Was Microsoft just incredibly lazy here, randomly spreading classes wherever was convenient, or was there an actual purpose to this madness? And, if there was a purpose, what should you consider when writing your own controls with their own design time logic?
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windows forms api design component model
Brian in
Coding |
May 31, 2004
Imagine this: you have a great software project you’re working on. You’ve decided to use Visual Studio’s Visual Inheritance feature so you can re-use portions of your application’s UI. While working on the base classes, you decide that all base forms need to provide a “Title” property, so you add the property and make it abstract. You go on for a little while longer and then open a designer for a form that derives from your base form. What do you get? A nice fat juicy error message stating that abstract classes cannot be designed.
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windows forms component model